


Peaceful Easy Feeling

by portolans



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Baby Fëanor, Character Study, Childhood, F/M, First Meetings, I'm Sorry Tolkien, Pre-Oath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portolans/pseuds/portolans
Summary: A study of Fëanor and Nerdanel in Valinor.





	1. Flowers

“It’s not good enough.” Fëanor swept his arm across the table, sending pieces of painstakingly carved crystal dancing across the floor.

“Fëanor, patience. You will improve, but not if you smash everything that presents a difficulty. Go, compose yourself before returning.” Patience. It was always patience. Work slowly. Be calm. Why not passion for once? he wondered. Why not channel his ambition instead of repressing it?

“Yes, Mahtan.” His frustration was already fading, but enough of its spark remained that it felt satisfying to crush a shard of crystal under his foot as he left.

Fëanor returned to the workshop after everyone had left, wishing he could undo his actions from earlier that day. If he worked through the night, he thought, he could remake what he had broken. Perhaps then Mahtan would see that he was serious about his craft. A favorable report from the master smith would make his father proud. Instinctively, he reached for the tools that lay strewn on his bench, but his hand found something else. It was a flower, carved from stone but so delicate that Fëanor feared he would break it. Its petals were inlaid with crystal shards that seemed too familiar – the project that he had broken just a few hours ago, he realized. Fëanor had rarely seen pieces that he didn’t think he could improve, but this was made with a skill that he could barely match, and out of the broken fragments of his own work. Entranced, he turned the flower in his hand, watching as it reflected dancing stars onto the walls of the workshop. All his desire to remake what he had broken was gone, and in its place was a burning need to outdo the mystery sculptor.

Silver light had turned to gold when Fëanor finally set down his tools. A spray of blooms, carved out of a single piece of the clearest crystal, nestled in his palm – his best work, he realized. A gift for a gift, but also a challenge – Curufinwë Fëanáro would not be so easily outdone.

“I did it angry, too, and look how well it turned out,” he muttered aloud to the empty room. The glittering bouquet, lying on his workbench, offered no reply.

As Fëanor’s footfalls faded down the corridor, a figure stepped out from the shadows of the workshop. She held the crystal flowers up, and laughed as they reflected specks of light onto her auburn hair.


	2. Enigma

Nerdanel loved the sea, although she could not have entirely explained why. It was the latent power it held, she reasoned. When she closed her eyes and stood in the surf, she could almost imagine that her feet felt the very foundations of Arda. There was a song there – not the peaceful music of the Quendi, but something ancient and powerful and barely restrained. Today, the water barely rippled, but she had watched waves crashing on the cliffs and caught her breath at the sight. The sea was never predictable.

Fëanor, however, was. She had watched him walking alone across the pebbled beach in the fading golden light for as long as she had been doing the same. He was remarkably habitual, Nerdanel had found, and the shifting rocks behind her let her know that today would not be the exception. 

“I did not expect to have a companion in my wanderings.”

“You will not. I wished only to thank you for the gift.” Even with her back to him, Nerdanel could picture the confusion on his face. She turned, smiling triumphantly for the moment he recognized the crystal flowers bound across her forehead. 

“You are welcome.” He inclined his head in the formal gesture of acknowledgement, and Nerdanel's smile faded when she read no surprise or question in his eyes.

“How did you know?”

“How did you know at what place and which hour to stand on the shore awaiting me? Examined more closely and compared to your other works, your hand was unmistakable, Nerdanel Mahtan’s daughter.” 

“Only as unmistakable as your walking patterns are predictable, Curufinwë.” She had, admittedly, watched Fëanor from a distance for some time, but it was disconcerting to think that perhaps he had been doing the same. 

“Why did you do it?” He began picking his way along the beach, leaving Nerdanel to follow him. “Why use the pieces of what I broke?” The only sounds were their feet on the rocks and the surf on the shore as she considered, trying to rationalize a decision that had been an impulsive one. How did you tell someone they reminded you of the sea? That you looked at them and saw a beauty that felt ancient and terrible and doomed to forever dash itself on whatever enclosed it for love of an unattainable freedom? The thought came from nowhere and took her by surprise. Was that, then, what had drawn her to Fëanor? The wind carried a leaf out over the water, taking the nebulous ideas with it as quickly as they had come. The sensation of having understanding lie just under a surface she couldn’t crack was an unfamiliar and vaguely unpleasant one to Nerdanel. She wrestled with her words, every option unsatisfying, before settling. 

“I was curious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who likes short chapters? I like short chapters! Chapter 3 will continue this scene from the opposite point of view.


	3. Glass Breaks (Too) Easily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation, continued.

Fëanor had not been surprised to find Nerdanel waiting for him. He had often seen her – no more than a silhouette with tongues of flame whipping around her face – standing on the very edge of the sheer rock face above the sea. In her work, at least, he caught glimpses of a mind he could call an equal. The fact that he could not decipher her intentions bothered him, like looking at a drawing with proportions ever-so-slightly distorted – disconcerting but impossible to pin down.

The beach sloped up to meet the cliffs and Fëanor wondered how often Nerdanel had watched him from the vantage point he held at that very moment. It was exhilarating to watch water crash over rock – perhaps she would not mind so much if he extended his walks to include the cliffs in the future. Perhaps, in time, he could make her reveal what it was that had drawn her to him.

“I’ve always loved the sea,” he began. “Not the sort of trite, feel-good love in stories, though. No. More like something that takes your gut and twists it until you choke and you can no longer tell dying from living. Is that love? I suppose it is. We are immortal and old, but the sea is more ancient than any of our people. It is, I think, a different kind of beauty than the rest of Valinor – not so ordered, not so bright. At its foundations, it is uncontrollable; darker, more dangerous. I love it and fear it at once.” Fëanor stopped abruptly, unaccustomed to sharing his thoughts so freely. They had come spilling out, like water from a cracked vessel, and no matter of regrets would put them back. He had made a similar mistake – narrating all his thoughts to a small crowd around his workbench – not so long ago as to have forgotten it. She would laugh like the others had, he thought ruefully. She would laugh and flip her hair over her shoulder and lean in too close and tell him how odd he was, well-intentioned but inane. That was the first time he had dashed a carving to the ground in anger, but no one had turned the pieces into art then.

“Recognizing danger and being afraid are two very different things.” Nerdanel’s voice pulled Fëanor back to the present. To his surprise, there was no mockery and no flattery on her face. “The sea is powerful, unrestrained, but not something to fear, I think.”

“But it cannot be controlled. None but Ulmo could ever hope to constrain it, and I would hesitate to own him its master.”

“You fear that which you cannot hold securely on your own, then.”

Fëanor paused, watching Nerdanel as she sat on the cliff edge, her legs dangling. They were not so very different, he thought, and the idea intrigued and surprised him. He had seen the light behind her eyes and watched her standing in the waves, oblivious to the rest of the world turning about her. She understood his fears, at least imperfectly. He found himself as annoyed as that night in the workshop, desperately needing to be superior. She was supposed to be impressed by his words, not reading his heart and telling him what was written there.

“You are mistaken.” They both heard the lie in his voice.

“You do not hear the music, then, in the sea.”

“The waves? They do not sing – shout, perhaps. Not sing.” Golden light was fading into silver and turning the water below into crystal and glass. The flowers on Nerdanel’s brow winked a thousand shades of blue and grey, and Fëanor found himself thinking, before he could stop himself, that they did not suit her. Crystal was delicate and clear and too common. The blue green of sea-glass against her hair would be better. Hair. Blue. The sea. The digression circled back around. He wanted to know too many things – what had brought her here, why she had followed him, why she was speaking of music in the sea. Her mind did not lay out easily in front of him like so many others, and it was infuriating.

“I ought to be going back. Thank you again.”

“It was a pleasure.” Formalities were the saddest way to end a conversation, Fëanor mused. He should say something else, ask her to meet him again, ask her why his voice was touched at the edges with disappointment. He went to rise, but Nerdanel had already turned away, walking back down from the cliffs. He watched the wind catch her hair until she rounded the curve of the beach and was gone, like a candle wavering and then extinguished.

* * *

 Fëanor sat on the cliff edge long after the changing of the lights, listening with the baited breath of one waiting for his doom to be decided, desperately hoping to catch a single note of a song he had never heard – except, perhaps, in the voice of one who had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do elves have sea-glass? I like to think that they do, because it's such a lovely concept -- sharp edges worn down into something that's very nearly soft. Even if they don't have glass bottles to litter with in the first place, perhaps it's a natural phenomena of Valinor? I'm sorry, John and Christopher, if I preach sea-glass heresy.


End file.
